BETWEEN HISTORY AND METHOD

BETWEEN HISTORY AND METHOD

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GR0NBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SAHOTRA SARKAR, Boston University SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York VOLUME 145

STEFAN AMSTERDAMSKI Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Science BETWEEN HISTORY ANDMETHOD Disputes about the Rationality of Science Translated by Olga Amsterdamska and Gene M. Moore SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Amsterdamskl. Stefan. [MI@dZY hlstorl~ a metod~. Engllshl Between hlstory and method : dlsputes about sclence / Stefan Amsterdamskl ; translated by Gene M. Moore. p. cm. Includes blbllographlcal ISBN 978-94-010-5199-6 (a 1 k 1. Sclence--Philosophy. 0175.A5713 1992 501--dc20 references and Index. paper> 2. Rational1ty. 1. Tltle. the ratlonality of Olga Amsterdamska and 92-18172 ISBN 978-94-010-5199-6 ISBN 978-94-011-2706-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2706-6 Printed on acid-free paper Originally published by Miedzy Historia a Metoda, Paristwowy Instytut, Wydawniczy, Warszawa, 1983 under the title Miedzay Historia a Metoda. Ali Rights Reserved 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1992 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, inc1uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREP ACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION PREP ACE TO THE POLISH EDITION INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I The Development of Knowledge and the Ideals of Science 9 CHAPTER IT Ideals of Science and Rules of Explanation 27 CHAPTER ill The Modern Ideal of Science 44 CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V The Institutionalization and Professionalization of Scientific Research 65 The Sources of the Crisis of the Modern Ideal of Science 79 CHAPTER VI Escape to World Three 101 CHAPTER VII Are There Selection Criteria? 122 CHAPTER VIII Order and Anarchy 153 APPENDIX Philosophy of Science and Sociology of Knowledge 177 NOTES AND REFERENCES 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 211 INDEX OF NAMES 225 vii ix

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION In this book I have tried to develop further the ideas expressed in my previous work, Between Experience and Metaphysics, which was published in the same series in 1975. Several years have passed since the original Polish edition (and then the Italian translation) 1 of this book appeared. The fact that the principal ideas expressed in it have withstood, as I see it, the brunt of criticism, has led me to remain basically with the original text. Two main changes have, however, been introduced. First, I have added an Appendix containing the original version of a paper I presented at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in June 1988 and a short postscript to that paper referring to comments made during two discussions at the Kolleg. Let me briefly explain the reason for this addition. In recent years the landscape for historical and philosophical interpretation of the evolution of scientific knowledge has altered. The strongest of the new contenders for epistemological recognition are social constructivists, who analyze in detail how knowledge is produced within specific social settings, including the instruments and procedures of particular laboratories and the economic and political realities of particular scientific communities. The local character of these studies raises the question of whether they can ever provide generalizable epistemological claims. In fact, the proponents of the strong sociological program as well as the social constructivists believe that their (otherwise interesting) local case studies not only have epistemological consequences, but, what is more, that they compel us to change radically our opinions concerning the character of scientific knowledge and the mechanisms of its evolution. So today we are no longer, as I wrote, in the same situation as T. S. Kuhn when he asked, "How could the history of science fail to be a source of phenomena to which theories of knowledge may legitimately be asked to apply?" 2 The tables have been turned, and after what I have written in my book against a purely methodological approach to the evolution of knowledge, I felt obliged to ask: Can social history and the sociology of knowledge indeed replace philosophy of science in solving epistemological problems? Can they, namely, explain the universalization of scientific knowledge, i.e. can they explain how claims to knowledge have come to vii

viii be accepted beyond the local context in which the knowledge was produced and within a variety of settings where quite different practices, problems and political and social factors were at work? I am convinced that they cannot, at least not without accepting the idea of some theoretical, historically changing "background consensus" called in my book the ideal of science, within the framework of which scientific research is done, and which mediates the social and other circumstances of the "production" of knowledge. The second change is less important. I have decided to omit Chapter VII of the original book, "Technical Rationality and the Ideal of Science." This was a polemic with certain concepts presented in the writings of the Polish philosopher Leszek Nowak, which had, as time has shown, a rather local character. I am most grateful to professor R. S. Cohen for his interest in publishing this book in English. Besides the persons mentioned in the Preface to the Polish edition, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have commented on the book in the course of discussions at the College de France (1984), the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (1987/88), and at the faculty of Philosophy at Stanford University (California) in 1991-and especially to professors Nancy Cartwright (L.S.E.), Yehuda Elkana (Jerusalem), Peter Galison (Stanford), Horace Judson (Stanford). Timothy Lenoir (Stanford), Rene Thorn (Bures sur Yvette), and Norton Wise (Los Angeles). Fin~ly, very special thanks to my daughter Olga and my son-in-law Gene Moore for their translation work; without their help this book would probably not have been published. s. A. Warsaw, January 1992.

PREFACE TO THE POLISH EDITION This book is a continuation of the reflections presented in my previous book, Between Experience and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975). The present volume was written in 1975-1979, and now that its publication has become possible, I have made some minor additions and corrections. In 1973/1974, thanks to a Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, I was able to spend a year in the United States, where I had the opportunity to discuss my views with participants in the lively debates about the mechanisms of scientific development that were taking place at the time. Private conversations and public discussions contributed to my becoming aware that both sides in this debate shared a belief which was one of the sources of their disagreements and which, at the same time, made its resolution impossible. Both those who defended the idea that the development of science is a purely rational process which can be reconstructed historically on the basis of the rules of scientific methodology according to which it proceeds, and those who rejected this thesis, shared a conception of rationality which, in my opinion, was both historically and epistemologically dubious. Moreover, I became aware that in my earlier book I had to some extent also accepted this idea, and that as a result I had not been sufficiently consistent: I had to admit that many of the critical remarks about this issue were indeed correct. Initially, the problem had appeared rather banal. I noticed, however, that when the criteria of rationality which find their expression in the scientific method are understood as a historical category, the debates about the development of science become largely irrelevant: for if we accept such a historical view of rationality, then it is possible to maintain both that the development of science is a rational process and that it is impossible to reconstruct this process historically on the basis of unchanging methodological rules expressing this rationality. Such a purely semantic manner of solving this problem seemed suspicious, however: it was too simple. It suggested a manner of solving debates which I knew from elsewhere, and which was based on the possibility of changing the meaning of terms in such a way that two seemingly contradictory theses could be united by the conjunction "and" with no ix

X substantive consequences. And the reason why the debates continued despite such a simple possibility seemed obvious. Pondering this issue, and reading yet again from this point of view both the texts which I already knew well and some newer work, I became convinced that this simple solution was after all not banal in the least, since its acceptance has a number of significant and often far-reaching consequences which cannot be incorporated into any of the previous competing positions. The fact that the conjunction allowed me to see a connection between the debates about the rationality of science and the debates about the role of science in modern culture appeared particularly significant to me. These debates are linked because the same thing is at stake in both of them: namely, the acceptance of a particular ideal of science which may be considered rational or irrational from the point of view of the realization of specific cultural values, and which also specifies the set of rules of investigation which are then, on the basis of a given ideal, considered rational. As a result, many of the problems which concerned me until then began to form a coherent whole: methodological matters (such as the debates about the model of scientific explanation, the issue of the correspondence of theories, or the role of crucial experiments in the empirical sciences) as well as historical or sociological issues (such as the professionalization of science and its consequences, scientific revolutions, the role of scientism, etc.). Many people and events contributed to this development: the discussions at the international seminar organized by the Aspen Institute in West Berlin, and a discussion meeting with T. S. Kuhn organized at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall of 1976, as well as the colloquium which I conducted at the Institute of the History of Science, Education, and Technology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the years 1975-1980. My collaboration with the Enciclopedia Einaudi (Turin), which forced me to specify in a relatively consistent manner my views on a variety of issues in the philosophy of science, also played an important role: the articles written for the encyclopredia are linked by the basic idea of this book. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who on various occasions have helped me to write this book by offering critical remarks, and especially to J. Agassi. E. Chmielewska, B. Chwederkzuk, R. S. Cohen. A. Grtinbaum, G. Holton. T. S. Kuhn, W. Krajewski, J. Lalewicz. L. Laudan. E. Mokrzycki, E. Nagel, L. Nowak, B. Skarga, G. Stent, K. Szaniawski, M. Wartofski, and K. Wolicki. I must also mention two long and for me extremely interesting discussions with Irnre Lakatos. I

xi remember his interest in my ideas and the critical effort he exerted to make me abandon the erroneous direction in the philosophy of science which he was convinced I had chosen. The most important debts to written texts are reflected in the references and the bibliography. Stefan J\msterdamski Warsaw, July 1981.